“Lewis Clement had achieved
a triumph of the first magnitude in engineering. The Summit
Tunnel was 7,042 feet above the sea. This
was the highest point reached by the CP. The facings were off by
only two inches, a feat that could hardly be equaled in the twenty-first
century. Clement had done it with black powder, nitroglycerin, and
muscle power. He had not used electric or steam-driven drills, steam
engines to power scoop shovels, or any gas or electric-powered carts or
cars to haul out the broken granite. There were no robots, no mechanical
devices. Well over 95 percent of the work was done by the Chinese
men. They and their foremen and the bosses, Clement and Crocker
and Strobridge, had created
one of the greatest moments in American history.”

“More
than a dozen tunnels were blasted
through the granite mountains. Most were on curves, laid out by Lewis
Clement. When the faces met, they were never more than an inch off line,
showing the remarkable accuracy of his calculations and instrument work
under the most difficult of circumstances. Van Nostrand’s Engineering
Magazine said in 1870 that the undertaking was preposterous, but
Clement did it.”

The idea for a transcontinental railroad "to shrink the continent
and change the whole world" was first
proposed by men of imagination in 1830. It wasn't until 1862 that Congress
passed a bill
authorizing such a venture. In 1869, after a long, bitter and often terrifying
struggle against Indian attacks, brutal weather, floods, labor shortages,
political chicanery, lawlessness and a war, the first transcontinental
railroad finally became a reality. Now the way was open for vast expansion
and social changes that would make America the industrial giant of the
world. ... One of the great engineering feats of history and ... a fascinating
chapter in the development of our country.
[After Rails Across the Continent: The Story of the
First Transcontinental Railroad by Enid Johnson.] Text Courtesy
Walt Winter.

“The Chinese made the roadbed and laid the track around Cape Horn.
Though
this took until the spring of 1866, it was not as time-consuming or difficult
as had been feared. Still it remains one of the best known of all
the labors on the Central Pacific, mainly because, unlike the work in
the tunnel, it makes for a spectacular
diorama. As well it should. Hanging from those [ropes], drilling
holes in the cliff, placing the fuses, and getting hauled up was a spectacular
piece of work. The white laborers couldn't do it. The Chinese
could, if not as a matter of course, then quickly and — at least they
made it look this way — easily. Young Lewis
Clement did the surveying and then took charge of overseeing the railroad
engineering at Cape Horn.

“What Clement planned and the Chinese
made became one of the grandest sights to be seen along the entire Central
Pacific line. Trains would halt there so tourists
could get out of their cars to gasp and gape at the gorge and the grade.”

Racing to Build the Pacific Railroad:"...So work on as though Heaven was before you and Hell
behind you."From a letter
written by the Central Pacific'sC. P.
Huntington to Charley [Crocker], dated July 1st, 1868.